We are now in the final moments. Both bidders, me being one, are on a conference call with the company selling the domains. The conference call started a few bids earlier. Up until then, we had been receiving phone calls from the company. The company would then tell us the bid status and then we would tell them our increased bid. Since the bidding has gone on so long they decided to put us together on a conference call. I now knew who I was bidding against. It turned out to be the party I thought it was. At that moment I knew what the outcome would be.
Time can sometimes fool you. A few seconds can feel like an eternity. Using that logic I probably took years off my life during the few moments I waited after we gave our last bid. Our last bid was a large increase. I then hear the other party say…. 25k more. It’s over.
Was I disappointed? Of course I was. However, you can’t win every battle you go into but I do feel I did everything possible that I could have done. I also feel if we had went millions higher, he would have come back with 25k more.
Who was the other party? He was the former chairman of the company that was selling the domains. He is someone I have spoken with in the past and have the utmost respect for. I thought he had already owned these domains. However, as it turns out he did indeed own many great names, but these particular names were owned by his old company and not by him.
I believe he feels as strongly about generic domains as I do. I do not know for certain, but he probably was the one who registered them for the company originally and might have felt that they were like a part of him, sort of like children. I know that is the way many domainers feel about their domains. In the end, I feel he deserved them.
Here is the sec report filing on the sale:
On February 25, 2009, we entered into an agreement to sell the assets of Domain.com, our wholly owned subsidiary, to A. Emmet Stephenson, Jr., Inc. (“Mr. Stephenson”) in exchange for cash of $7,075,000. The assets of Domain.com consist of domain names, trademarks and corporation names. We conducted an auction for the assets and received bids from multiple parties, including Mr. Stephenson. Mr. Stephenson presented the highest bid, which represented the selling price, of $7,075,000 and the sale was completed effective February 25, 2009. Mr. Stephenson is one of our co-founders, has managed the Domain.com subsidiary since 2006 and owns approximately 20% of our common shares outstanding. Because the transaction involves a related party, the Audit Committee of our Board of Directors considered and approved the transaction.
Here is a list of the domains:
Domain Names
401-K.com
Airlines.com
Anniversary.com
Annuities.com
Birthday.com
Bookings.com
Bookshelf.com
Bourses.com
Car-Rental.com
Christmas-Gifts.com
Communications.com
Cumpleanos.com
Currencies.com
Dining.com
Distributors.com
Dividends.com
Doctors.com
Electronics.com
Exchanges.com
Excursions.com
Frequentflyer.com
Guidebooks.com
Hospitals.com
Investments.com
Municipals.com
Museums.com
MyValentine.com
Products.com
Profits.com
Royalty.com
Ships.com
Taxfree.com
Technology.com
Tee-Times.com
Ticketrez.com
Wedding.com
Wholesale.com
Wow great story Larry, well told and well played.
What a list of domains.
Certainly a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Thanks for telling the tale
Michael,
It was indeed something special.
larry
Amazing domains sold for a great price.
I still think its a steal.
Electronics.com alone is worth atleast 2 mil in my opinion.
Sunny,
I agree.
larry
Cool story Larry. I thought it was someone else the whole time. Glad you let it out of the bag.
Wow, some incredible domains on that list.
Thanks for sharing the story.
My eyes popped when I saw names like:
Electronics.com
Wholesale.com
Airlines.com
Technology.com
Investments.com
Etc.
They are all top tier names.
They sold for a good price, but hey,
that’s a lot of money to put forward!
Thanks for sharing.
– Aron
Wow. It almost would’ve been smarter to just sell them off in bits and pieces… $7mill for those? Almost like a story I just heard the other day about a huge $200+mill hotel in Dubai being sold for $2mill…
Thanks for the story, I REALLY enjoyed the series. 🙂
thanks Sammy. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Make sure to sign up for our RSS feed for posts. Lots of good stories to come.
larry
Wow, definitely a great buy at 7MM.
agree, “Wow”
amazing stuff… what a killer list of domains… dividends, investments, wedding… hard to pick a favorite… thanks for sharing the info Larry
Brian,
Long time. I hope all is well.
Yes, the list was incredible.
larry
Definitely a unique opportunity and story. Great battle to the end Larry.
Larry, great story. Well told, with details that normally only get heard in hushed conversations. I liked the series format, it kept me coming back. Thanks!
Very nice portfolio sold there!
Yes, personally it’s the one having the highest concentration of gems I ever seen.
According to Valuate.com the set of names appraise ~28 millions, so the buyer purchased with a potential discount of 75% (in a kidding note they qualified to be listed at BargainDomains.com)
You commented you had access to the profit the names were generating. So I am wondering if it’s not a secret if the monhly profit was over $24K, or in other words if it was over classic bank interest a $7 million deposit use to generate?
thanks shaun, It means alot coming from you.
all the best
larry
Thank you for the info, great price he got, I would think Electronics.com and Wedding.com are $7m on their own. You did a great job telling it made it more interesting. Best of luck.
Enjoyed reading the story, hell of a portfolio. Sort of sucks to play against a stacked deck, but well done for trying.
Birthday.com
Bookings.com
Dining.com
Electronics.com
Technology.com
Wedding.com
Wholesale.com
Any of these alone in my opinion would rake in 7 figures. Awesome story and nicely told mate.
Keep up the good work,
John
nice list of domains there buddy!
electronics.com would be my fave
as agreed with everyone above, it was a great bargain!
Question: How did you know about this internal auction ?
Great first-hand account of an intriguing auction! Thanks for sharing.
Best,
Camilo Acosta
http://www.RootOrange.com
Just checked a handful of the best. Parked. I guess you can’t call that a waste exactly, they’re making money. But I find myself starting to feel about domains like these as though they were kids who had a lot of potential, but who had dropped out of school.
Great Story,
well put together,, you had me looking for part 2,3,4 etc. everyday. Those names are unbelieveable. For $7M, you should of called a few more people to put together more funds. Those names are once in a life time, but I guess you knew who you were bidding against and felt that price was no object.
Larry,
Great story – great experience.
And, on top of the anxiety from the active negotiations for Toys.
Did your life insurance company know how close they came to paying off?
🙂
The advantage that the buyer had that you probably did not was the inside knowledge of the closing of one of their call centers. And, the corporation wanted the profit and revenue to offset the closing cost.
That was a great purchase. He could easily sell a few of the domains to recoup his purchase.
Once again, the same thing happened here that initially happened with Toys. Many of the major buyers did not know about it. I’m sure IAC could have muddied the water.
Thanks for sharing.
Richard,
I agree that if they properly advertised it they would had received much more. However, if i didn’t come in when i did they would have received much less. They probably probably should have paid ,me a commission on the extra 5 million they received 🙂
Thanks steve. I think if i raised it to 10 or 15 million, i would have been outbid. It’s hard to beat someone who’s been on the fortune 400 list.
I’m calling BS on the story
The eagerness to “share” this story smacks of some kind of marketing.
That – you a 3rd party – suddenly “discovered it.
Oh ya, also the fact that it eventually “sold” to a related party – how many of these “sales” have we seen in the past (eg “sale” of funds.com for $10m, LOL)
Count me skeptical unlike all the sheeple.
Baaa…baaa..
What was the highest earning name in the portfolio? Did you find out why one name did not earn the parking revenue for several months? What made you guys not want to partner with another major player on the names? 7 million for those names makes all other names look overpriced.
Do you have any idea of his intensions with the names?
Aggro,
I’m sorry you feel that way. I suggest you read another blog as it all true and you will never believe some of the other events that have happened over the last few years that I plan on posting about.
larry
Aggro,
You probably have never met Larry or know much about him.
I would be skeptical if a small or medium size domainer
told the story. But, Larry has been involved with the
purchasing a number of super premium domains over the years.
Furthermore, a few major domainers have commented above.
If it wasn’t so, they would be all over it.
Richard,
Thank you for your kind words.
all the best,
Larry
But if I WERE a shareholder in the company that sold these names for $7M I would be VERY upset and looking to take some kind of action. Your bidding on them kind of legitimizes the sale. I wonder if that’s what the buyer was looking for all along.
Products.com is way too genetic for me. What do a browser expect to find under products? Every thing!!!!
Amazing. You can resell the portfolio for $xxx.xxx.xxx now.
………..What was the highest earning name in the portfolio? Did you find out why one name did not earn the parking revenue for several months? What made you guys not want to partner with another major player on the names? 7 million for those names makes all other names look overpriced.
Do you have any idea of his intensions with the names?
Are you kidding? Those names are nowhere near 7 million? I could see them in the Top 50 generic names of all-time.
What a bargain. Now I know why you sounded so desperate in your installments. 🙂
Yeah, there is only one winner in every game, and congratulations, ‘coz you played your part well. That’s the most important.
they could had got more if it was sold to end users
I’m sitting in a pool of my own drool 🙂
Wow, Larry. Those are some special names. $7mil is a lot but you could have sold just one or two to the right end user corporation and had the rest for free.
Of course, easy for me sitting here not laying out $7mil.
Congrats. Too bad that one bidder had to be there but he’s probably saying the same about you since you cost him so much money.
Larry… damn! 😉
A great read and yes just as good as any film ,it had drama, a villian ….. the peoples hero and a ending not covered in fairy floss , the best drama goes to ….
OMG!!
Cant believe the quality of names
investments, profits, doctors.
WOW!!!
The story is great (I am waiting for the “other stories” telling of which was mentioned… It would be really interesting though if anyone would disclose the monthly earnings of the portfolio 😉
Hi Larry,
Your story-telling was brilliant. Breaking it down to daily chapters created amazing suspense for many readers.
The Finale, in the “Saga Of The Battle Of Domaine,” showed you riding your mighty steed into the battle, bravely and deftly slashing the enemy, charging hard to slay the General of the Opposition, causing rivers of blood (cash) to flow, but ultimately, you knew when to pull your troops back to fight another day. Sun Tzu would be proud!
The list of domains in the auction were worth much more than the total price paid, in my professional opinion. I’m surprised there weren’t more of the big domain buyers involved in pulling this portfolio under their wing, even if it was getting to the high seven figures.
Now, to contend with the “normal” domain buy/sell market, where most of us make our money on the 3 to 5 figure domains. Let’s all wish ourselves a most successful 2010 in marketing domain power to the “small to mid-sized” companies.
Thanks Larry, for an incredible story. My one request is that you put this story out as a news release on all the online business PR sites. Couldn’t cost you more than a few hundred $$$, and it would do three things for sure:
1) Bring in A LOT of readers to your site from the business and consumer sectors
2) Educate A LOT of readers from the business and consumer sectors
3) Potentially inspire A LOT of readers from the business and consumer sectors to purchase aftermarket domains (based on #1 and #2 above).
Much success to you, La-Fish! (your new nickname, appropriately so, it seems!)
great story. thankyou so much for sharing.
technology.com
birthday.com
bookings.com
wedding.com
unreal
and many more
7 million is definitely a STEAL
the above 4 are worth $10 – $20 million alone imho as a cluster
@rob sequin
rob,
thanks for your input
larry
@roddy
roddy,
do you want film rights ? LOL
larry
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Piotr Kurczab, Cheap Domain Names. Cheap Domain Names said: “The Multi-Million Domain Auction That No One Knew About” http://bit.ly/85QKB5 […]
Great series of posts, and thanks for sharing the names. My first thought was 7 million seems like a low price for those quality domains. Someone could just hold the domains and sell them off one at a time, and likely make much more. Wedding.com, Investments.com, Birthday.com, each of those alone could be a 7 million plus business if developed.